In an industry hurtling toward digital, print still holds value—but only if it can evolve. At the World News Media Congress 2024 (WNMC25), Iconic Media and Atex shared a compelling story of transformation: a story about legacy, scale, and how print automation is making print production viable, sustainable, and—most surprisingly—exciting again.
Iconic Media, one of the UK’s largest regional publishers, is no stranger to complexity. With more than 120 weekly and 13 daily titles, they publish 6,000 editorial pages per week. As Publisher Tim Robinson put it:
“Print is a challenge to us, and we want to spend as little time on it as possible. But it still makes a great deal of money.”
That paradox—valuable but burdensome—is what sparked a multi-year collaboration with Atex, a leading content management and automation platform.
The Challenge: Managing a Massive Print Portfolio in a Digital Age
Tim Robinson, Publisher at Iconic Media, opened the session by outlining the scale and complexity of their operations.
“We cover vast parts of the UK with a mix of digital and print brands,” he explained. These include well-known titles such as The Scotsman and The Yorkshire Post, along with more than 120 weekly and 13 daily mastheads, totaling 6,000 editorial pages published every week.
Print remains valuable to Iconic Media, both financially and in terms of audience reach. “Even our smallest titles have a life left in them,” Tim said. “They still make money, and they matter to their communities.”
However, as print continues to present operational challenges, the goal was clear: to reduce the time spent on print production, allowing for a greater focus on content creation without compromising quality.
The Journey to Automation: Ten Years in the Making
Iconic Media’s partnership with Atex spans over a decade. Their initial steps into automation began with a shift from handcrafted pages to template-based design, centralizing production under a team of professional designers. This shift eliminated the inefficiencies of localized, manual design and laid the groundwork for what would come next.
Another key transformation was moving from a print-first to a digital-first workflow. All content is now published online, first edited, reviewed, and finalized for digital audiences. This ensured that when the time came to automate print production, the material was already optimized and ready.
The company also restructured internally, separating content creation from print-only production. A small team now handles print assembly, allowing journalists and editors to focus entirely on editorial output.
This shift was critical, Tim explained:
“All of our content is published online first… It’s already been checked, edited, and rewritten if necessary. Print effectively becomes a by-product of the whole content creation process.”
With this foundation in place, print automation could finally take root.
Breaking the Newsroom Clock: A Weekly Paper in Just 1 Hour
The most remarkable outcome? Weekly newspapers that once took days to design can now be produced in under an hour.
“Our holy grail… is an hour for production. And we are now achieving that in a great number of titles.” Tim shared.
The process is both elegant and efficient:
- Local editors curate a print list by dragging and dropping pre-published digital stories.
- The automation engine runs the layouts, adjusting typography, headlines, and images within predefined tolerances.
- A small central team reviews and outputs the paper, often with little to no adjustments required.
“Most of the products we put out do not require any alteration at all. If we do, it’s about one headline or picture crop in ten titles.”
This isn’t just a theory. As of now, 58 weekly newspapers are using the system, producing 1,500 pages per week. By Q3, all 102 weekly titles are expected to be powered by print automation.
Why Atex?
Iconic Media had experimented with other systems—but ultimately chose Atex for several important reasons:
- Unified CMS: All content lives in a single system, eliminating the need for multiple platforms.
- User-Friendly Interface: Minimal training is required to operate the automation tools.
- Compatibility: Atex works seamlessly with existing ad software and editorial workflows.
- Flexibility: Editors retain the ability to specify story priority and page placement when needed.
- Control & Editability: Pages return fully editable within the same CMS—headlines, bylines, images, and captions can be adjusted with ease.
Perhaps most importantly, readers have not noticed any difference. “These pages still look and feel like newspapers,” Tim noted. “No reader has ever complained or pointed out a drop in quality.”
Diverse Layouts, Real Newspaper Feel
Automated doesn’t mean generic. The Atex system handles a wide variety of content formats:
- Multiple story layouts
- Sports pages
- Columnist sections with page furniture
- Picture galleries and double-page photo spreads
Even across-the-gutter images are accurately rendered. The system adapts headlines, body text, and image sizes within tolerances that maintain the visual integrity of the page.
“Nothing looks like a school project or some AI approximation,” Tim joked. “These are clean, professional pages—virtually indistinguishable from what we produced manually.”
Tangible Impact: Leaner, Smarter Production
To date, 58 weekly newspapers have moved to this automated process, producing around 1,500 pages a week. National World plans to automate all 102 weekly titles by Q3 2025.
The numbers speak volumes:
Today, only 6 people manage the production of 1,500 pages per week, with the capacity to handle twice as much. This isn’t about cutting costs—it’s about redeploying talent into storytelling and digital innovation, where the future of journalism lies.
What’s Next: Scaling to Daily Titles and Beyond
The work isn’t done. Iconic Media and Atex are now focused on adapting the workflow for daily newspapers, which operate on tighter timelines and different content flows.
They’re also exploring new avenues like:
- Automated broadsheet production
- Print-on-demand models
- Expanding automation to other print products
As Tim summarized, “This isn’t just a print project—it’s about freeing our teams to focus on digital, which is the true core of our business.”
Conclusion: Automation That Empowers Journalism
What Iconic Media has achieved with Atex is more than a technical success story—it’s a vision of how legacy media can adapt and thrive. By automating the repetitive tasks of print production, they’ve empowered their teams to do what they do best: create compelling, community-focused journalism.
At Atex, we’re proud to be the technology partner on this transformative journey. And we believe this model can serve as a blueprint for publishers worldwide.
Because the future of print isn’t about resistance to change—it’s about embracing the right kind of change. And print automation is proving to be exactly that.
